When reading is harder than a mother kucker: Top-down effects of the taboo-ness on novel word pronunciation

Sarah Kucker, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

Lynn Perry, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, United States

Abstract

When pronouncing novel/unknown words, readers often use prior
experience with similar, neighbor words. Comparison to neighbors can be helpful
for unknown or novel words (wug is like pug), but it can also lead to errors
(pint is not like mint). We investigate whether pronunciation can be affected by
top-down influences, specifically the perceived taboo-ness of a known neighbor.
While orthographic similarity typically biases novel-word pronunciation to be
similar to a known word, taboo-ness might bias pronunciation away from a likely
one. Adults read aloud words from three lists– novel words that were
neighbors to taboo words, novel words that were neighbors to benign words, and
known control words. All known neighbors and controls were frequency matched.
Results show differences in the correspondence between pronunciation of novel
words and known neighbors depending on the relative taboo-ness of the known
neighbor. Findings suggest that perceived taboo-ness has top-down influences on
reading.